May have erred

Reuters reported Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it may have erred in a May 9 report that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to victims of deadly violence sparked by the article. The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the original source of the allegation was not sure where he saw the assertion that at least one copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet in an attempt to get detainees to talk. "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday

Ace blogged The media does in fact have an impressive fact-checking system. If a quote or purported fact portrays Republicans, the military, or America generally in a positive light, they check it to death to make sure they're not spreading propaganda. But... if the quote or purpoted fact portrays those in a negative light, it pretty much gets into print with only the most cursory once-over by the editors. If it agrees with their basic world-view -- if it feels "right" in their gut -- then in runs. Fact-checking comes later... after a couple of newly-minted corpses.

Jonah Goldberg blogged Newsweek apologizes for getting the Koran in the toilet story wrong, sort of. Something tells me that if the White House made a mistake which resulted in riots, deaths, etc there'd be a just a smidgen more outrage than we'll hear about this.

Clayton Cramer blogged Whose side is Newsweek on? The side of Osama bin Laden, perhaps?

Glenn Reynolds blogged Two points: (1) If they had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they'd feel much worse -- which is why they generally don't report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don't extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars; and (2) If a blogger had made a similar mistake, with similar consequences, we'd be hearing about Big Media's superior fact-checking and layers of editors. People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because -- let's be clear here -- Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

Michelle Malkin blogged Newsweek has blood on its hands. Blood on its desks. Isikoff should cough up his source.

IraqTheModel blogged I haven't payed any attention to this story from the beginning plus, it's technically impossible to flush a 700 page medium sized-if not large-book down a toilet!! What is interesting is that Iraq witnessed no demonstration at all, not even a single statement of denoencemnet from anyone although Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya kept running updates on this subject almost every news-hour and have always talked about the descretion incident as if it were confirmed news. If this is to indicate anything I think it indicvates that Iraqis are more concerned about their own lives than they're about the "issues" of the Islamic world's dignity and more important (and here I see our community approaching a turning point) is that people are giving the media less credit than they used to do.

CQ blogged Remember this when the Exempt Media gets on its righteous high horse and instructs us on their superior system of checks and balances. Newsweek ran an explosive story based on a single, unnamed source that it knew would cause a huge effect on the Muslim world, at precisely the moment when we need to ensure that people understand that we're not at war with Islam. It's just a little late to say, "Oops, we're sorry." It's a little late to unring the bell that Newsweek rang with its false story -- it's too late for the nine people who died because Newsweek couldn't wait to run its story without checking it properly first.

Newsweek just can't be trusted. At the same time they admit the can't back up this claim, they make other similar claims when the source is just a released detainee (who certainly would tell the truth, right?)